John Lescroart: The 13th Juror

"Mrs. Witt?"

"Mr. Freeman?" Tentatively, she had her hand out.

"No."

Disoriented, she now pulled in her hand and stepped backward. Hardy thought she looked about ready to break down. He spoke quickly. "I work with Mr. Freeman." Not strictly true. "He's stuck in court."

She didn't move. "What do you lawyers do, just pass people around? I called my husband's attorneys and they said they couldn't help me but David Freeman could. He's the best, they said."

"He's very good."

"So I agreed they could call him, fine, and next thing you know her you are. I'd never heard of Mr. Freeman. I've never heard of you. I can't believe I'm arrested. For Larry's murder, and my son Matt's for God's sake. They can't think I killed my little boy." At the mention of the son's name, her lip began to tremble. She turned away, hand to her face. "I am not going to cry."

Hardy nodded to the guard, who stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. It was a small room, five-by-eight, with a pitted desk and three metal chairs taking up most of it. The window faced the office for the women's side of the jail. Two uniformed female guards moved in and out of the picture to their cluttered desks, up, out somewhere, then back in. The women's common tank was just around the corner. When the door had been open, noises exploded every minute or so. Clangs, sobs, voices. Now the door filtered most of the sound.

Hardy waited for Jennifer Witt's breathing to slow down. Finally she turned back to him. He was sitting with one leg over the corner of the table. "You can have Mr. Freeman if you'd like but he won't be available for a while. This is a grand-jury indictment. There is not going to be any bail."

"You mean I have to stay here? God… how long?" She was struggling with the effort to get words out. Suddenly she hung her head and sat down.

Hardy felt like an intruder. He let an eternal minute pass.

She took in a deep sigh as though she'd been holding her breath. I'm sorry, it's my fault. I just didn't want to get in any more trouble and I thought I should have a lawyer."

"Okay." Hardy had come off the desk and went to sit across the table from her.

"Not that it matters."

"It might," Hardy said.

She wasn't going to fight about whether having a lawyer was a good thing or not. Wearily, she shook her head. "I keep thinking something's going to help, something's going to make it better."

Hardy started to say that the right representation could make all the difference. But her gaze was a blank. He wasn't getting through. "Mrs. Witt?"

She wasn't there. Or rather, as far as she was concerned, Hardy wasn't there. She shook her head from side to side. Eventually, a pendulum winding down, she stopped. "No," she said. "I mean Matt. My baby."

Hardy took in a breath himself and held it a moment. He, too, had lost a son. Over the years he had gotten better at keeping it out of the front of his mind. But he would never forget, never even approach forgetting.

Looking at this woman – frail now in the jail's jumpsuit – he found himself feeling a strong connection. It was unguarded and maybe unprofessional, but there'd be no harm in letting the legalities wait a few minutes. God knew, once they began they'd go on long enough. "How long has it been?" he asked.

She pulled at a strand of her hair. "I can't accept it." Her voice was hoarse now, her eyes distant. "Nothing seems real anymore, you know?" She gestured around the tiny airless room. "This place. I feel like I'm sleepwalking in a nightmare… I want to wake up… I want Matt back…" She swallowed, seemed almost to gulp at the air. "God, I don't know. What can you do? What do you care?"

"I do care, Mrs. Witt."

She took that in without a blink, not a sigh, not a glance at him. Inside herself again.

Hardy looked down at his hands, linked on the table between them. Jennifer Witt wasn't worried about her lawyers and their games, about her bail and her baggy yellow jumpsuit. She'd lost her son and nobody was going to bring him back. She was right. Nothing Hardy could do would make that better.

There was a square of light from an outside window over one of the guard's desks. It had moved nearly a foot since Jennifer had been brought in.

She had begun to open up, to listen. The details of Hardy's proxy representation accepted for the moment, they were finally getting down to it. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life in jail, did she?

"Not for something I didn't do, Mr. Hardy."

"Okay. But let me ask you, what did you mean when you said you deserved it? Deserved what? "

In a reaction that struck Hardy as pathetic, she ducked away, as if she were going to be hit. "Nothing, anything… this…"

"What?"

"I shouldn't have let it happen. I wasn't there. Maybe if I'd been there…" She shook her head again.

"What did happen? Why do the police think you did this?" Hardy wanted to hear her version. Never imagining he'd have any part in it, he'd followed the news of the crime casually as it appeared in the papers or on television, just another of the many stories of domestic woe that came and went to help sell soap or hamburgers or newspapers.

"I don't know. I don't understand. When they came to arrest me I asked them-"

"And what did they say?"

She shrugged, apparently mystified. "They got to talking about my rights, warned me about anything I said, that I could have a lawyer, that kind of thing."

"But you saw this was coming? You must have-"

She stopped him, interrupting with a dry noise that sounded bitter when it came out. "I haven't thought about anything, don't you understand that? I've been trying just to get through the days."

Hardy knew what she meant. She scraped a fingernail over the tabletop, staring at the yellowing strip of varnish that lifted and flaked away. Again, she swallowed – as though keeping herself from breaking down. But her voice – the tone of it – sounded almost matter-of-fact, if weary. He was sure the coloring was protective. Well, she would have to try to soften it if her case ever went to trial, if she ever testified. She would come across as too cool. Even cold.

But that, if at all, was a long way off.

"I was just getting used to the awfulness of it. I mean, okay, there might have been somebody who was robbing the house or had some problem with Larry – I don't know what. And Larry gets shot. Larry, Jesus… But Matt…?"

She was losing the fight with her tears.

Hardy was with her. "The papers always said Matt must have been an accident, he walked in at a bad time, something like that."

She nodded. "That's what I've been thinking about, Mr. Hardy. If only he hadn't been there, if it had been a school day, if Matt hadn't walked in or said something or whatever it was he did… Or if I had stayed home, could I have protected him?" She bit her lip, hit the table with her small fist. "That's what I've been thinking about, not the goddamn reasons somebody might have thought it was me. And that's all I've been thinking about." A tear hit the table and she wiped at it with her hand. "Goddamn it," she said. "Goddamn it."

Again sounding tough.

"It's okay," Hardy said, meaning the language, the loss of control.

"Nothing's okay."

Hardy sat back in the hard chair. She was right. And he believed her.

Eventually she came up with something.

"I guess maybe they thought it was the insurance, but it wasn't-"

"How much insurance?"

"Well, Larry… he was a doctor, and you know… maybe you don't, but doctors are crazy about insurance. They have to be, with malpractice and all. Anyway, Larry was insured for two-and-a-half-million dollars."

Hardy took that in. "Double for violent or accidental death?"